


Shackles and Lifelines

by DrowningByDegrees



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amnesiac Bucky Barnes, Comfort/Angst, M/M, Not CA:WS or CA:CW compliant, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, Wow this went to darker places than anticipated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:43:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9102937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/pseuds/DrowningByDegrees
Summary: Shortly after the attack on Manhattan, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents discover a weapons silo in Russia. Among the inventory is a cryogenic tube containing Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, thought to be missing in action decades prior. Steve is quick to welcome his old friend back, but nothing is ever just simple for either of them.Edit - You may have seen I changed the rating on this fic to explicit. I can't say one way or another if there is going to be reason for it in sexual context at this point, but the story took a turn for the more graphically violent.





	1. Chapter 1

_Whatever they'd expected, raiding the home of a former USSR officer, this wasn't it. Grand as the home above was, the basement was a warehouse that seemed like it could have gone on for miles. That, Agent Alester guessed, was where all the power was going. She hadn't pinpointed what, amidst the horde of weapons and ammunition might consume so much, but it was the only explanation she had left. She looked at her partner, smiling faintly at his bug-eyed expression as he took in their surroundings. "How long do you think all this has been here?"_

_"Oh, come on. Have you seen the dust? It's gotta be years, Grace. Maybe decades even. What I want to know is who puts a mansion on top of enough explosives to blow up half a country?" To his credit, despite the incredulity in his voice, Jim had gotten right to work. Clipboard in hand, he'd already started marking down inventory as he made his way down the first aisle._

_"Well, who goes looking for explosives under a mansion?" Grace shrugged, pulling her pen from behind her ear. "I'll take the other side and meet you in the middle."_

_With that, she got to work. True to Jim's assessment, years' worth of dust had gathered on shipping containers - and every other surface - in the dimly lit basement. She spent a great deal of her time wiping away enough of it to jot down faded identification numbers. There was no point in taking inventory after all, if they couldn't find the M1939 she’d just walked by later._

_Good grief, these weapons were old. World War II old, but no less deadly for it. Crates of anti-tank grenades sat beside couple of RS-82 rockets, and that was just scratching the surface. Granted, none of that explained the power usage. Nothing here plugged in or required electricity, and she wasn’t yet desperate enough to start tearing through the countless shipping containers to see if there was something hidden inside._

_In the end, Grace didn’t have to. She was an hour and a half in to her inventory when she heard the soft hum of a machine at the far end of the aisle. Carefully, she made her way closer, grimacing when she found the basement’s only seating. There were cords everywhere, and at first she thought it was what was making the noise. There was no life to the piece though. It looked like some manner of torture device with its heavy arm and leg restraints, and a vice that hung overhead, but without power, it was no more than a particularly sinister looking chair._

_She was still jotting down notes about the piece when she realized the buzzing was still a short ways off. Looking up, she took note of a weak light a few more steps down the aisle. There were more cords, but these served a more immediate use, leading to a heavy metal tube. The tube looked mostly solid, with grooves in the metal where a door gave way, and a single, small square of glass. There was no resisting the urge to look in, so she did, gasping at the slightly gaunt, sleeping face on the other side._

 

 

For a while, all he was aware of was the cold. It was an awful, pervasive thing that seemed to impossibly begin in the marrow of his bones and bleed outward. Maybe it was the other way around. He ached too much to tell, and it didn’t matter when he couldn’t move. His limbs wouldn’t… or maybe couldn’t cooperate, but he shuddered to the tempo of the ice in his veins, teeth chattering miserably in his mouth. He couldn’t quite pry his eyelids apart, but the light around him was so bright that they scarcely felt like a shield from it at all.

He very much wanted to lift his hand to shield his face from the too bright light, but nothing was cooperating. His limbs might as well have been made of stone for all they bothered to respond, though… he was sure he felt pressure against one. A restraint maybe. Something about that thought stuck. It hitched in his breath and tumbled like rocks in his stomach, his eyes snapping open in a way that made him whimper as the light hit full force. It seemed like a reasonable response, even if he couldn’t piece anything together. Captivity meant… meant… something. Whatever it was was bad.

Even with the specter of imprisonment hanging over him, he couldn’t lift his head. It flopped to the side without much effort, but what he found only left knots of fear and panic in his chest. There were the restraints he’d expected, only more of them. One affixed his wrist to the bed and two more wrapped around his arm and torso at a strange angle. It took some doing for him to work out why, lolling his head to the other side to find a shoulder devoid of the limb that ought to be attached. His chin hit metal, though he couldn’t see his shoulder beyond a shiny gleam at the edge of his vision.

Quite abruptly, whatever tenuous control he had over his responses slipped away. He needed, desperately to get away, and shouted as much up at that awful light that refused to let him be. He thought he was shouting anyway. His lips moved, but only a raspy, dehydrated croak escaped him, and it did nothing to get his captors to free him. They didn’t even seem aware that he’d awoken, or that he was trying to get loose.

It took regaining enough muscle control to break one of the restraints to get anyone’s attention at all, it seemed like. Ice crystals in the meat of his muscles jabbed at him with every move he made, but the fear of captivity overwhelmed the agony that came with moving, and he kept trying to get free. His own personal chaos distracted him enough that he didn’t hear the soft whoosh of an opening door.

He felt the pinprick of a needle in his immobilized arm though, and grimaced at the nondescript face poking out from the collar of a lab coat. The picture dredged up something awful, but he couldn’t remember what or why, and chalked it up to the fact that they had him tied down and were poking at him. The leverage he needed to arch up off the bed was harder to come by with each passing second. Paralytic agent? That just… oh that wasn’t fair. The world was going a little blurry around the edges, and as the cold started to recede, he felt miserably damp.

“Mr. Barnes. You’ll hurt yourself. You need to relax.” Dimly, he was aware the lab coat was talking to him. Relax? Fat chance of that happening if they were going to make him their damned prisoner. Only his limbs were going limp all over again, and the panic he felt had fewer and fewer outlets beyond a wordless moan.

“You’re going to be fine. There are things to get in order, but once we have the answers we need, you’ll likely be free to go.” Even groggy, he caught on to the careful tiptoeing around the issue. No concrete promises. No guarantees. He’d have admired the cageyness maybe if he weren’t the recipient of it. Gray was crowding in, and each time he blinked, his field of vision dulled further.

Their questions perhaps had some importance. His head was going foggy though, drifting back towards the darkness and miserable cold that he couldn’t shake. They had questions, but so did he, if he could just get his uncooperative lips to form the words. _Who the hell was Mr. Barnes?_

_\-----_

“When, exactly, were you going to tell me what your team found in that bunker?” Steve demanded. There was a sharp, exasperated note to his voice, but it was rather deserved. His attempts to be polite had gotten him exactly nowhere.

“With all due respect, sir. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.” To her credit, the agent stood her ground. On any other topic, Steve would have been impressed.

“With all due respect,” he bit out instead, “Sergeant Barnes is a who, not a what.”

“Maybe so, but he hasn’t bothered to say a word in his own defense. With the exception of the occasional Hydra operative, he’s about the most obstinate detainee I’ve ever dealt with.” Steve watched the agent’s eyes widen slightly, the only hint she gave that she was perhaps worried about having said the wrong thing. Obstinate sounded like Bucky though, and given torture and delirium hadn’t broken his friend in the war, Steve seriously doubted whatever SHIELD had been putting him through had any more success.

“Do you wake all your detainees up to incarceration and loss of limbs? I’m stunned your methods aren’t more effective,” Steve replied blandly. There was only the smallest note of satisfaction in the way her lips pursed at the jab.

“There was no telling what he could do if we left it…” she started and then seemed to think better of it. “You think you can get a proper explanation out of him? You be my guest.”

She waved him out the door, but Steve wasn’t paying attention. The second she buzzed the lock on Bucky’s door, he was headed through it. Barely inside, he was already piping up. “Sorry about this, Buck. They’re a skittish bunch. You’d think they found a time bomb instead of a war hero. I’ll have you out of here in…”

That was about the time he looked up. Bucky was watching him from behind matted strands of dark hair, and heavens, he looked awful. Whatever had been done to Bucky, he was more muscular than the man who’d fallen off the train, but that hardly meant he looked healthy. The tank top he was wearing did nothing to hide the jut of his ribs, and the blanket he draped over his shoulders couldn’t conceal how poorly cared for he’d been. It was a wonder he hadn’t died in stasis. There were shadows under his eyes, and Steve was even more aggravated that they’d taken the arm away. Bucky looked quite helpless without it.

“Bucky?” he tried again, but his friend didn’t respond. The only indication Bucky had even heard was the subtle downturn at the corners of his mouth. Whatever happy reunion Steve had anticipated would come in this room, this was as far from it as he could get.

“They called me Mr. Barnes,” a soft, gravely voice eventually croaked out. How long had it been since Bucky had even had a glass of water. Basic needs immediately shot up the list of Steve’s priorities, just ahead of reading these agents the riot act that they hadn’t thought to do it first.

“Good. At least they’re polite,” Steve bantered, smiling ever so slightly at his old friend. The expression didn’t stick though. Something about Bucky’s words struck him all wrong.

Bucky looked at him finally, but it wasn’t the relieved or happy gaze of an old friend. It wasn’t the threat of an enemy either. All that registered was confusion, and Steve might have tried to get an explanation, but Bucky was already talking. His eyes crinkled with suspicion, and he moved just the tiniest bit further away. “I don’t know who that is.”

The admission was a swift kick to Steve's gut. He'd only been out of the ice a little while himself, and the loss of his best friend was still raw. Despite the anger he'd harbored that SHIELD could do this to his friend, there'd been hope too, that maybe he wasn't alone out here after all. It was a hope that scattered abruptly. 

 

No matter how emotionally compromised he tended to be where Bucky was concerned, Steve did his best not to make it worse. That his friend didn't remember him changed the situation somewhat, and he was quick to try to assess where exactly things stood. The guy on the bed certainly looked and sounded like Bucky. Was he a clone, maybe? A fall like that, and honestly Steve knew he shouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the real deal. That didn't seem like the right answer either, though. 

 

"You appear to be James Buchanan Barnes," he supplied carefully, watching his friend's face for any hint of recognition, but he came up empty. "Is that not your name?"

 

"Bucky..." the figure on the bed murmured back, though Steve couldn't quite tell if he was remembering, or simply figuring out why he'd been addressed that way before. Steve watched the man's mismatched shoulders tense and sag, his expression strained and exhausted as he finally tilted his head upward. Without hair in the way, there was no doubt in Steve's mind. He'd have known that face anywhere. Clearly, his own surety wasn't enough because Bucky looked nothing short of miserable. "I don't know."

 

"Okay. That's okay. Being frozen isn't exactly a pleasant thing. Maybe it's mucked up your memory," Steve replied in an effort to reassure his friend. That he was speaking at all was positive in light of the lead agent's claims, so Steve pressed. "What  **do**  you remember?"

 

Perhaps it was an overstep. Any momentary openness in Bucky's face vanished. He was shuttered and suspicious, edging slightly away as if the extra two inches would somehow make up for his missing limb against a super soldier. Steve didn't comment, even if it hurt to watch, and he didn't flinch when Bucky's voice was sharp edged and distant. "What do you know about being frozen?"

 

"A fair bit. Turns out you don't have the monopoly on being stuck on ice." It was banter that would have been received with a wry smile once, but Bucky wasn't smiling. His lips were in a flat line, and his eyes only narrowed slightly, so Steve tried a more direct approach. "The last mission I was on after you died... or, I thought you did, the plane I was on crashed and I ended up frozen until just a few months ago. 

 

Maybe Bucky didn't recognize him, but clearly something Steve said reached his old friend. Bucky's brows knit, lips pursing thoughtfully before he finally opened his mouth. "You knew me."

 

"Of course I knew you. You're my  _best friend_." Steve took a step closer, relieved to find that Bucky didn't scoot away when he did. There wasn't any warmth there exactly, but curiosity was a start, and Steve was willing to cling to any option that might reach him. "We grew up together. Then the war happened and we fought together too."

 

Bucky's lips parted and then closed again, his expression drawn and quiet. "You said I died."

 

"I thought you did. I saw you fall." Could cryostasis really have stripped the entirety of Bucky's memories? That was very much what it looked like. The man he’d known wasn’t a poor liar, but Steve didn’t think there was any dishonesty in this. It wouldn’t serve any purpose for Bucky to lie about this, and the look his initial statement had netted him was suspicious, almost accusatory. Heavens, how that must have sounded. It hurt to articulate, but Steve made himself anyway. “You were trying to help me, and got knocked off a train. I tried to reach you, but I wasn’t fast enough. You fell so far, there’s no way you should have survived.”

 

“You left the body?” There was something about the flat, detached way Bucky said it - as if he were more a thing than a person – that twisted in Steve’s chest. It was hard to know if that was an accusation, but it was precisely the sort of thing Steve had blamed himself for the whole trip here.

 

He wanted to explain, to insist he’d never have been the sort to abandon his dearest friend. It hadn’t been so simple as that. Scant days had passed between the loss of Steve’s best friend, and his own descent. “They were still looking when my plane went down. I didn’t know what had happened until I got the news they found you in a Russian bunker.”

 

“The Russians didn’t make me,” Bucky muttered, though Steve didn’t know for the life of him what it meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. It had come out in about the same fashion as a recording from the pull cord of a child’s doll.

 

“Of course they didn’t. You’re a person. No one made you, Bucky,” Steve shot back, wondering belatedly if it was a reference to his arm. “They did freeze you though. Any idea why?”

 

Bucky flinched. He wasn’t looking at Steve anymore. He wasn’t looking at anything but the blank, clinical wall of the room (cell) where they were keeping him. There was a response, but it wasn’t an answer. “What happens to me now?”

 

Before Steve could respond, a speaker crackled overhead. “That’s not Rogers’s call to make, but if you start cooperating, we’ll have this sorted a great deal faster.”

 

Steve’s jaw clenched irritably. So, she’d been listening the whole time? For an organization founded by someone as incredible as Peggy Carter, SHIELD was making a habit of straying into territory that made it awfully hard to remember they were supposed to be the good guys. He held up a finger before Bucky could ask him anything, stalking out of the cell to go speak with the agent. Well, he tried to. Apparently, they were so afraid of the too skinny, one armed amnesiac they’d acquired that Steve’s presence wasn’t enough to keep them from locking the door. If it had been anyone else, maybe he could have been more pragmatic, but this wasn’t anyone else. It was Bucky, so he lifted his chin as defiantly as his scrawny younger self ever had, sure there was a camera to go with the speaker. “You really want to have this conversation like this?”

 

Sure enough, there was no response, but the lock clicked open behind him. He left Bucky with a promise to be right back. There was no mistaking his aggravation as he stalked into Agent Alverez’s office. “Do you treat everyone you rescue like a criminal?”

 

“Usually only the ones being stored in a bunker full of weapons,” Alverez shot back, not looking particularly intimidated.

 

“He’s not a _weapon_ , Alverez. He’s a human being, and he’s my friend.” Steve gritted his teeth, arms crossed as he watched her.

 

“Maybe,” Alverez conceded, taking a seat behind her desk. If it were anyone else, he’d have parsed it as them putting a piece of furniture between them, but she seemed completely unconcerned with his presence. “But for the good of the rest of the world, maybe isn’t good enough. You said yourself that he should be dead. Doesn’t that worry you, even a little?”

 

Preying on information he hadn’t even given her? That was just low. Steve pursed his lips, choosing his responses carefully. “You don’t get to trample on the rights and dignity of a human being because you’re afraid.”

 

“No, Captain. It doesn’t work like that. What I don’t get to do is potentially endanger civilians for the comfort of someone whose existence I can’t even explain. You want him out of here? Good. I would like nothing more than to have the two of you out of my hair, but you have to throw me a bone. Prove he’s not a threat and he’s all yours.” Alverez adjusted the frames of her glasses up her slender nose, and made a show of shuffling paperwork. When Steve didn’t immediately leave, she cleared her throat. “Will there be anything else? I’m sure Sergeant Barnes would benefit from a sense of urgency in the matter.”

 

“At least give him his arm back,” Steve insisted. It was going to take time to get Bucky out of here. He could accept that, even if he hated it. What he couldn’t accept is them making his friend a cripple on top of everything else he’d suffered already.

 

Alverez frowned, looking ready to dismiss the idea out of hand. He wasn’t sure what tipped the scales, but Steve breathed a sigh of relief when she gave in. “Once the lab has ensured it’s not booby trapped in some fashion, the limb will be returned to him. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

 

It wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t even a situation Steve would say tipped towards positive outside of his friend being alive. It was something though, and Steve only stopped long enough to tell Bucky (or rather, Bucky’s back, given it was all he could see of his friend) that this would all be over soon.


	2. Chapter 2

For a few minutes, there with his unexpected guest, he’d almost believed the worst was over. The few staff he’d been in contact with after those terrible first moments awake asked him questions he had no idea how to answer, or prodded at him like an object with no agency of his own. Then, that guy had come along and called him a friend and he was a person again. He had an awful feeling that he hadn’t been one in a very, very long time.

Hope was awful and fleeting though. The minute he heard the speaker overhead, he knew he wasn’t getting out. At best, he was a glorified science project. At worst, they were going to try and finish what the Russians had started. Only, he had no idea where that came from. Trying to remember only gave him empty space and a headache, but it was true. He was sure of that much. Oh sure, his new (old?) friend promised to keep working on getting him out, but he didn’t expect anything on that front. Out of sight, out of mind and all that, and in this cell he was _definitely_ out of sight.

At least he had a name, for all the good it did him. The poking and prodding they’d done while he was tied down apparently convinced these people of who he was, and the guy in his cell hadn’t even asked for that. He’d just called him Bucky (which sat much better in his head than this ‘Mr. Barnes’ business), and looked at him like he’d seen a ghost.

Bucky. He could work with that, even if right now it felt like a lie. He was an empty thing wearing this Bucky person’s face, but maybe that wouldn’t be forever. Maybe this time he’d be allowed to remember. Bucky wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he desperately needed to. He didn’t give two shits about giving these people what they wanted, but answers were what _he_ wanted. It felt like the most logical place to start was with his recent visitor, but he’d been to out of sorts to think to ask for a name, and he’d be damned if he reached out to these menaces for help.

At a loss for better options, Bucky stayed put. That guy would come back eventually, hopefully trusting enough to unwittingly aid in his escape.

That night he dreamed his nerves were on fire. He woke up screaming, and those bastards had to be watching, but no one came.

 

 

The Russians had certainly been thorough. Alverez hadn’t been much help, but Steve found his way to the files stored in the weapons silo. They were weapon acquisition records and inventory files mostly, and near the bottom of the stack, he found the one pertaining to the cryostasis tube. Its intended purpose was a project called Winter Soldier. Given they’d found Bucky in it, putting two and two together was hardly difficult, but that was where the trail stopped. Steve dug back through everything he had from the weapons cache, but none of it offered up any answers about how they’d acquired Bucky or what they had done with him.

Maybe there was someone who he could call for help. Natasha had turned out to be an ideal, if morally ambiguous partner. He’d worked with her extensively in the month since the Chitauri invasion, and their skills often complemented each other’s. More importantly in this case, she had ties that might be of help. Steve pulled out his phone and dialed, thumbing at the stack of papers as the call connected. 

It picked up on the second ring. "Kinda busy right now. Make it quick."

"It's not exactly a quick story," Steve replied. 

"Then skip to the punchline." Natasha sounded just a touch breathless, and there was some sort of commotion in the background. At least she hadn’t given him grief for skipping out in the middle of a mission. Natasha wasn’t exactly warm, but she was compassionate when he least expected it.

"I was hoping you could help me dig up any Russian files on the Winter Soldier." If there'd been a cord to twist on his phone, he'd have been doing so. It felt like a huge thing to ask.

There was a thud, loud even through the phone. "Who is the Winter Soldier?"

“I think he’s my best friend.” Steve could hear a soft groaning in the background and it definitely wasn’t Natasha. “Did you answer the phone in the middle of a fight?”

“I hate voicemail.” She was quiet for a fraction of a second before adding, “It was _him_ , then.”

“It certainly looks that way. I don’t know how he’s alive. He doesn’t remember, well… anything.” Steve closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And Natasha, I’m sorry for leaving in the middle of a mission. It was just…”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Natasha cut in sharply. “I’d like to think I’d do the same for someone that important to me. I’ll see what I can dig up, but keep in mind you may find you don’t like the answers.”

 

Bucky was half asleep when he heard the soft snick of the lock on his door. There had been agents earlier, demanding answers he didn’t have, but they’d eventually left. Maybe he’d imagined it, but the way they scribbled notes seemed awfully accusatory, like they thought it was somehow his damned choice not to know anything about himself.

When the door swung open, Bucky expected to see the agents again, or maybe more doctors, but the head that poked in was much more welcome. Really, he felt a bit bad planning to pull one over on this guy who was theoretically his friend. This cell made his skin crawl though, dread creeping through his veins as he waited for the worst to come. No matter how much he liked his current visitor, it felt like his life depended on getting away.

“They’re allowing visitors? I must be on good behavior,” he drawled, pushing himself to sit up. His jaw length hair felt terrible as it swept in his face. Really, he just felt terrible in general. He’d have given about anything for a proper shower and a comfortable bed, but he quickly found he couldn’t cope with the guard detail that accompanied the former, and as for the latter… he was pretty sure they thought they were doing him a favor giving him his paper thin blanket. His gaze fell on a folder in the guy’s hands. “Unless you’re just here seem less awful than those other guys so I’ll talk.”

“Would it work?” Bucky thought he was serious at first, but there was the barest hint of a smile.

“Sure. You want a review of this place? Because the bed is terrible, and their customer service leaves something to be desired.” An impish grin creased Bucky’s lips ever so briefly. Banter came almost instinctively. It was strange and unsettling when he thought about it. He couldn’t even remember this guy’s name, but that long-suffering chuckle he got for his efforts sounded like something he’d known forever.

“Actually, I just thought this might help jog something.” The guy held the folder out to Bucky. His name was on it.

“I was a sergeant?” They’d told him that all their awful needle poking and whatnot had confirmed he was the real James Barnes, but S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t bothered to tell him any of what that meant. Setting the folder in his lap, he used the one hand he had available to pull it open.

“You were more than that. You were a Howling Commando. There’s a plaque in a museum for you and everything. They might need to do some work on that though. It says you’re dead,” the guy mused.

Steve. His name was Steve. Bucky still didn’t remember, but his name was coming up quite a bit as he perused the file. That was useful, if only because it gave him an idea of how to catch his friend off guard. He flipped through the rather substantial folder page by page, eventually looking up at Steve. “If you guys know everything about me, why am I still here?”

“They don’t. They know everything that happened before, but not how you ended up in that stasis tube… or with the Russians, for that matter. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t really keen on letting you out until they’re sure they’ve covered their bases. I’m working on that though. Someone certainly ought to be.” There was something sharp in Steve’s voice. It wasn’t threatening so much as… righteously indignant.

“You don’t sound like you have much love for these guys,” Bucky ventured carefully. The more angles he understood, the better.

“Their mission, yes. Their methods? Not always so much,” Steve admitted, expression darkening. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“There’s worse things,” Bucky countered. He couldn’t remember what they were, but he was certain he’d experienced them. “Honestly, I’d just be happy to have my arm back. Just having the stump there makes it hard to sleep.”

Steve’s face scrunched like he’d just eaten a lemon, and Bucky just hoped he was reading it right. It didn’t take long to find that his gamble had paid off. “I’ll make sure they get it back to you.”

“Thanks. For everything, really,” Bucky murmured quite honestly. Whatever escape he was planning, he really was grateful for having a friendly face around. Steve seemed more intent on helping him than Bucky felt like he deserved. He could almost, _almost_ believe waiting for Steve to get him out of here would work out.

“I failed you once. I don’t mean to do it again,” Steve insisted, sitting gingerly at the other end of the bed. “Even if that weren’t the case, you don’t deserve this, and you certainly shouldn’t have to be alone.”

Bucky smiled in spite of himself. Maybe it was more of a grimace. He really wasn’t sure.

True to Steve’s word, a few hours after he’d left, doctors came in with Bucky’s missing limb. When Bucky looked up, he could see armed guards stationed outside, like they thought reattaching his arm might make him suddenly turn o them all. While Bucky had a few choice things to say about them reducing his mobility without a damned good reason, they had nothing to fear from him. He wasn’t about to play his hand yet.

What he did do was slide the arm back towards the empty shoulder socket. It fell in place with an audible click. Bucky gasped and gritted his teeth at the overwhelming shock of sensation as his brain recognized whatever nerves or sensors were in the cybernetic limb. His shoulder ached with the sudden weight after days without it, but at least he was whole again, more or less. The soft whir of machinery and the clicking of metal plates as he moved was familiar, even if he couldn’t quite remember ever having used the arm. He must have, as easily as he took to it.

Bucky watched his hand clench and unclench. The metal joints of his fingers moved smoothly, one after another to accommodate the motion. Open and closed. Open and closed.

_“Dobroe utro, Soldat.”_

_Open and closed. Open and closed. The click of metal was defeaning._

_“Dobroe utro, Soldat.”_

_The restraints fell away. His chest rose and fell to the tempo of his racing heart._

_“Dobroe utro, Soldat.”_

_He bared his teeth and all at once there was a throat in the vice grip of his metal hand. He squeezed and he squeezed and evening the sickening snap of bone under his fingers didn’t make him stop._

_“ **Net.** ”_

It was a memory, the first real one he’d had, and Bucky recoiled in horror. What the hell had happened? What kind of monster _was_ he? The recollection stuck like tar, and his stomach felt full of rot. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. was right to hold him here after all.

That night he dreamed of crimson spattered across untouched snow somewhere far in the wilderness. It could have ended there. It could have stopped long before he strangled the life out of another human being. The crack of bone beneath metal seemed louder in his head, echoing in all the empty spaces. He woke up sobbing, but no one came.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have seen I changed the rating on this fic to explicit. I don't know if there is going to be reason for it in sexual context at this point, but the story took a turn for the more graphically violent. 
> 
> I wanted to take a second and warn for torture in this chapter in case that's not your bag.

Bucky read the folder Steve had brought him from cover to cover, for all the good it did. It felt every bit as personal as reading about some historical figure he’d never heard of. No matter how many times he re-read the admittedly clinical retelling of his life, it never really registered as memory. There were plenty of records. There were even a few pictures, but those only made Bucky feel worse. Most of the pictures of him had Steve too, and if they’d both been strangers (it felt like they both _were_ strangers to him), he’d have practically felt the connection between the two of them. If the pictures weren’t enough, even the mission report structure to the files Steve had brought him couldn’t mask the lengths they were willing to go to for each other.

He should remember his best friend, and heavens, he _tried_. Bucky focused on the pictures, thumb dragging over their smiling faces in the last one. It seemed strange to him now, that they should be so happy, but there they were in their uniforms, both grinning at something off camera. Bucky just wished he knew what it was, how they could smile with such a nightmare happening all around them. Alas, those never seemed to be the memories that trickled back.

_“You could make this so much easier on yourself, soldier.”_

_“Barnes. James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038.”_

_“All you have to do is comply.”_

_“Barnes. James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038.”_

_“You won’t be able to fall back on that anymore when I burn it out of your head.”_

_“…Barnes. James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038.”_

_There was a rubber bit shoved in his mouth, and suddenly his whole body felt alight in the worst of ways. A lever was pulled and electricity shot through him, boring into his temples and snapping its way along every nerve. He convulsed where he was strapped down, the piece pressed between his teeth doing very little to silence his howling. It might have only lasted a moment, but it felt like an eternity of agony. Bucky was sure his skin was peeling away, that the energy that coursed through him was flaying him alive. He arched miserably away from the seat where he was strapped, but there was no escaping the awful feeling, like every cell in his body was exploding._

_As suddenly at it started, the power was shut off. Bucky sagged abruptly back into the seat, eyes glazed over in exhaustion. His chest rose and fell with each shaky, stuttering gasp for air. The metal arm that had replaced his ruined stump was smasming still, sending shocks through his shoulder and right through to his bones. Unraveled as he was, he only barely noticed the way he was drooling around the bit and out the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t quite help the miserable whimper that escaped when they yanked it from between his teeth._

_“Now then, are you ready to comply?”_

_“James… Barnes… 325… 57…” His head was foggy, and his tongue was thick and useless in his mouth. There was more. There should have been more, but he couldn’t cobble it together. Granted, he never really got the chance. While he was trying, the bit was shoved back in his mouth._

_“Again.”_

Bucky sucked in a sharp breath and tried to focus on anything other than what an awful realization that was. It was awful though, and maybe that was the beginning of the path that led him to choking that guy… whoever he was. Maybe it was exactly the sort of thing they’d wanted from him. He didn’t believe that, of course, but saying so did a little bit to dull the guilt that gnawed at him like an infestation of rats.

With as few memories as he had, it was a near impossibility not to pore over them. They ached and stung and Bucky wondered if it said something about the entirety of his life, or about the person he’d become, that everything he could recall was terrible. Maybe the rest was all gone, and what he had left was just a hodgepodge of nightmares. If that was what he had to look forward to, Bucky wasn’t sure he wanted to remember at all.

If anything though, Bucky was clever, even if he couldn’t remember that. He could only dwell so long before he pulled something useful out of the bleak fragments that came back to him. They had pulled his memories from him. There had been a time when he still recalled who he was. It wasn’t exactly helpful in any way he could act on, but it was encouraging, and Bucky sorely needed encouragement at the moment.

 

 

It was a waiting game. Steve was pretty sure he could get Fury to back him up if it came to that, but he hated the idea of calling in any more favors than he had with Natasha. She’d gone quiet since their last conversation, so he could only assume she was working on getting him what he needed to free Bucky from this mess.

_Be reasonable_ he told himself. Alverez wasn’t a bad agent or a bad person, even if it felt a lot like that right now. Had it been anyone but Bucky, he would have understood the precaution even if he didn’t like it. No matter how normal his friend seemed, there was no denying they’d found him in a Russian weapons cache. That was cause for concern, and even Steve couldn’t deny that Bucky’s memory loss did nothing to put those concerns to rest.

At least he convinced them to grant Bucky some modicum of privacy. After the second day Alverez had him moved to a room with a proper shower, though she declined to remove the camera. Once they had proof that Bucky wasn’t dangerous, she told Steve, they could talk. Steve prayed that Natasha would come through.

In the meantime, he cooled his heels at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, unwilling to make Bucky be entirely alone with this. He visited when he could, trying to make up for never quite able to keep himself for searching for a sign of recognition. So far, he’d come up with nothing.

 

 

Bucky thought about making a break for it when they moved him. This way, he wouldn’t even have to involve Steve. It was a terrible idea though. They cuffed him ( _just a precaution_ they insisted) before they even opened the door back up, and while he could probably free himself, a lot of people stood to get hurt in the process. If what he was remembering was real, hurting people was the last thing he wanted to do anymore. No. He’d bide his time and try to get what information he could wheedle out of his one constant point of contact, and make sure he had enough information not to screw up the only chance he’d likely get to flee.

In the meantime, while he wasn’t sure why they’d moved him, Bucky wasn’t about to complain. The space was less cramped, though maybe that was a subtle warning that he was going to be here a while. They herded him in and uncuffed his wrists, locking the door at his back before Bucky could even turn around. The room still looked sterile, but the bed looked downright plush in comparison to what they’d given him before, and there were a couple of changes of clothes and a towel sitting on the table beside it. He sort of wanted to crawl in and forget the world for a while. Instead, he set about investigating.

There was no getting through the walls, but he traced along every inch of them anyway, searching for a nonexistent weakness. What he did find his way to was a bathroom with an actual shower where he wouldn’t have to endure someone’s eyes on him. First things first, but he was _definitely_ coming back to that.

It didn’t take him long to satisfy himself that the room was devoid of much of anything useful. There was a rectangle of darkly colored glass set into the wall he’d be facing if he sat up in bed. Bucky wasn’t sure what it was for. It seemed to be positioned too high to be a one way mirror, and the surface wasn’t quite reflective for that anyway. Actually, it seemed quite dull when he stopped to take a look. It was a mystery to solve, which at least promised to preoccupy him for a little while.

Bucky snagged the towel from the side table. Spotting the telltale light of a camera in the corner, he took a change of clothes too. All the more reason to be sure that rectangle wasn’t one way glass. It wasn’t as if they needed it.

Despite being just as sterile looking as the rest of the room where they were keeping him, the bathroom felt like a sanctuary. There was a proper door, and if there was a camera, he couldn’t find it. The white tile floor was cool under his bare feet, and for once the silence didn’t put him on edge.

The walls were white too, save for a long mirror that stretched along the bathroom counter. The counter itself seemed almost comically huge given where he was, made to store toiletries he clearly didn’t have. It did make a good place to set his towel though.

Swallowing, Bucky met his eye in the mirror for the first time that he could remember. The face that regarded him back didn’t seem unfamiliar exactly, but maybe that was all the pictures Steve had provided him with. The resemblance was undeniable, even if he looked all wrong by those standards now. Long, dark strands of hair framed his face, and the stubble that peppered his jaw was punctuated by exhausted smudges under his eyes.

The rest of his body had that same odd air of him but not him to it. His frame was notably less slight than it had been. He was taller and broader shouldered. Maybe that was what made how gaunt he was more startling, as if they’d left him to starve before shoving him in the cryostasis tube. Granted, if what very little memory he had served him, that might not have been far off. The only word he had to go on that S.H.I.E.L.D. were the good guys was Steve’s, but he had to admit that at least _they_ didn’t deny him the basic necessities.

A little unsettled by his own reflection, Bucky shuffled until his back was to the mirror. He frowned slightly at the single handled valve. Muscle memory suggested there ought to be two. It was a simple enough thing to figure out though, and once he had it sorted Bucky shed his clothes and got in.

The warm water was exquisite, the first truly pleasant thing he could recall. It pattered insistently against his tense shoulders and down his spine, and for a few moments Bucky couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stand there enjoying it. There was a little whisper at the back of his mind scolding him for wasting the water, but he ignored it. If these people insisted on keeping him here, they could just deal.

No matter how much he felt like just standing there until the hot water ran out simply out of spite, the need to be clean won out. Soap and shampoo were welcome discoveries, and he was terribly relieved not to have an audience, actually. It meant no one could hear the grateful murmur that burbled past his lips as he finally got the chance to wash the grime from his skin. He didn’t know when the last time he’d managed to get cleaned up was, but it felt like forever.

As awful as his skin had felt, his hair was worse. It was slick under his fingers, and worse once the water soaked it through. Crinkling his nose in distaste, Bucky wasted no time pouring shampoo into his flesh and blood hand. It was instinctive to use both hands, even if his metal fingertips were decidedly less pleasant against his scalp. They got the job done until they didn’t, hair getting stuck in the metal joints. Blindly, Bucky tried to free himself with his other hand, and when that didn’t work, he gritted his teeth and brought his left hand down quickly.

_Straps held him down, but still he tried to lift his head, to get away. The downward angle he’d been restrained at was disorienting at best, and whatever they’d pulled over his eyes only made it worse. Right now, that felt like the least of his problems. There were fingers roughly in his hair, jerking down so hard he felt his neck bend backward in a way it most certainly wasn’t meant to. The pained moan it dragged from his was the last proper breath he got._

_It wasn’t the heavy towels they laid over his face that made him panic. It was the water that abruptly followed, soaking the cloth. Bucky held his breath as long as he could. His lungs ached and burned, and as dizzy as he’d been already, lack of oxygen made it far worse. Seconds ticked by, and he tried, he did, but Bucky couldn’t hold on forever._

_When he had to give in, the harsh breaths he tried to drag in brought no relief. Sopping wet cloth sucked against his nose and water dripped down his throat. His lungs burned all over again and he coughed and sputtered, only the bindings keeping him from convulsing right off the table._

This is it. This is where I die. _He was so certain of that, drowning miserably on a table at the hands of some unknown assailant. It was the last coherent thought he managed. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, they ripped away the cloth, leaving him gasping for air. His lungs burned, and some small, traitorous part of him wondered if maybe whatever it was they wanted wasn’t better than dying like this._

_He never got the chance to ask, as the cloth fell back in place, too abruptly for him to even scream before water was pouring over him._

The water had been so soothing before felt like an assailant now, and Bucky scrambled to get out of the tub so hastily he nearly fell. His scalp ached from the hairs he’d ripped out and there was still shampoo in his hair, but all of that paled in comparison to what he was fleeing from. He couldn’t go out there with the open space and that awful camera to put his terror on display. Putting at much space as he could between himself and the shower, Bucky wedged himself against the bathroom door, head between his knees, struggling to breathe.

 

 

“Bucky?” Steve called out. They’d allowed him into the room where they’d moved his friend (not that he’d given them much choice) with a stack of books and magazine he’d thought might keep Bucky occupied. The bed was empty though, and there was water running behind the closed door. There’d been a time when that wouldn’t have stopped either of them pestering the other, but Bucky didn’t remember him right now, and Steve hated to interrupt what little bit of real privacy his friend had.

Besides, he’d be done eventually, so Steve waited out in the main room. The minutes dragged on, one after another, and the hot water had run out by now? That was about the time it occurred to him that Bucky hadn’t answered. Worry knotted in his stomach. Maybe Bucky wasn’t even in there and it was a diversion for something else. Just to be sure, he went and knocked on the door. “Buck?”

“I… fine. I’m fine,” came the shuddery answer through the door, from someone who didn’t sound fine at all. Keen as Steve’s hearing was, it was hard to tell if that was panting he was hearing amidst the rush of the water.

“Oh. Umm…” Steve wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that, assuming he’d interrupted a very… human thing to do with one’s privacy. “I’ll back later.”

“Just _go_ ,” Bucky snapped back, only solidifying Steve’s assumption. He scrambled to leave Bucky to his devices. Surely, he’d earned whatever pleasure he could find in this place.

It wasn’t until he came back with dinner that he realized he had had entirely the wrong idea. Bucky was all but hidden under the comforter they’d given him, damp hair still dull and slightly sudsy with shampoo. The limp tresses all but shrouded his red rimmed eyes, but whatever haunted Bucky, he didn’t give it voice. Bucky didn’t say a word, in fact, the entire time Steve was there, and he only gave the tray of food a passing glance.

“Whatever’s bothering you. You don’t have to be alone with it,” he prodded gently, but by that point, Bucky wasn’t even making eye contact with him anymore. The only suggestion his friend had even heard was the way Bucky’s lips pursed in response.

They called him away eventually, or Steve might have stayed there all night, whether Bucky planned to talk to him or not. He left with the promise that he’d be back and hoped that next time he’d have better news.

 

 

_It wasn’t just the torture that rattled Bucky. It was what they’d made of him in the process._

_That night he dreamed of a woman on her knees, sobbing for mercy. There was a handgun cradled in his flesh and blood hand, his finger hooked around the trigger. She blubbered words at him as he cocked the hammer back, but Bucky was barely listening._

_He wasn’t Bucky. He didn’t deserve that name anymore. He was no one._

_“It’s quite simple, soldier. All you need do is comply.”_

_“Please. Don’t do this._ Please _.”_

_“We don’t have all day. If you can’t comply with orders, it would seem we have more work to do.”_

_The threat was ice in his heart._

_“Please. I haven’t done anything.”_

_“Pull the trigger, soldier.”_

_He didn’t close his eyes as he tightened the muscles in his index finger. A single shot rang out, followed by the thump of a body. He let the gun fall, clattering sickeningly against the linoleum. The last thing he remembered before they came for him was watching the blood spread across the floor. There was so much of it, inky red and viscous where it crawled out from beneath his handler’s body._

Bucky woke up fisting the blankets, terrified to make a sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying the story so far! I enjoy making new friends and taking story requests, so feel free to prod at me over on my [Tumblr](http://www.drowningbydegrees.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

_“Come on, Steve. I’ve been here for hours.” Bucky whined, shifting in the chair where he sat (sprawled more like)._

_  
“Almost done,” Steve called back, though how he managed it with the butt of a pencil in his mouth was beyond Bucky. Sun filtered through a cracked window of the little tenement unit, and idly, Bucky wondered if Steve’s hair had always been that color gold. The hue softened in the daylight, obscuring the young man’s face as he scribbled away at his drawing._

_Bucky huffed impatiently, stretching where he sat. “You said ‘almost’ half an hour ago.”_

_“Just another minute. I promise. Stop fidgeting, would you?” Steve hadn’t even looked up._

_“Okay, Ma,” Bucky teased, grinning at the way Steve’s face scrunched in response._

 

The memory slipped away as consciousness trickled in. He was sorry to let go of it, trading sunshine and careless contentment for a prison he didn’t entirely understand. All the same, reminiscence was a new and welcome discovery, far better than the terrors that had been plaguing him. It was bittersweet, something warm and simple and lost among better days far in his past.

 

Lost or not, Bucky found himself smiling, maybe for the first time since he’d woken up. Those days were long since out of reach. There was something there besides the nightmares that had crowded into the empty places in his mind. They were real, and he’d _remembered_.

 

He might have basked in that little victory for some time if he hadn’t picked right then to roll over, stretching his mismatched arms out. Metal knuckles flopped unceremoniously against the pile of clothes on the side table, and something beneath it. He’d only just barely registered that anything besides the flat top of the table was there before he heard sounds coming from the other side of the room. All at once, Bucky was on his feet, heart pounding in near panic. The door hadn’t opened, but noise meant intruders, and he was pitifully unarmed. With nothing else to defend himself with, Bucky brandished a metal fist, waiting for an attack that… never came.

“We’re following up. The report says you were in Saratoga.”

 

“I was at a conference.”

 

Bucky’s brows knit in confusion, wondering if he was eavesdropping on someone’s conversation.

 

“How about last Friday, around eleven, twelve in the afternoon, do you remember where you were?”

 

Bucky looked up to find people chatting on the screen he’d been trying to figure out the night before. Two men in suits were talking to a woman drinking at a bar. It was like a movie theater screen, but not nearly so large, and a great deal more colorful. Bucky didn’t remember going to movies, but he remembered they existed, so that was something. When the only sound seemed to be coming from the screen on the wall, curiosity started to edge out panic.

 

If there’d been any question whether he was watching something staged for entertainment or somehow eavesdropping on a real conversation, the loud bonging noise signaling a shift between Law and Order scenes certainly answered it. Real or not, the show kept his attention for a minute before Bucky started wondering what else he might have access to from the screen.

 

He’d turned it on somehow, and as out of sorts as Bucky was this far out of time, he wasn’t completely unacquainted with technology. Picking up the pile of clothing on the side table revealed the remote beneath. It was labeled simply enough, and aside from accidentally turning the volume up so high it made his head hurt, he managed well enough. Had they had this before he was frozen? Bucky didn’t think so. There was none of the muscle memory he had for some things. Either way, it was new to him, and a far better surprise than most of what he’d contended with lately.

 

 

Alverez had been adamant that Bucky was staying put until they established he wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a problem he could solve with a well placed punch. More importantly, he wasn’t quite ready to leave Bucky here without backup, even if they were supposed to be the good guys. Someone needed to be in Bucky’s corner, and as far as Steve was concerned, that was always going to be him.

 

It left him with exactly one option that didn’t involve spinning his wheels and hoping Natasha came back with answers. The S.H.I.E.L.D. database was a fount of information. Maybe some of it would give him enough information to get Bucky out. When he wasn’t slogging through the depths of old mission reports, he passed his time with a friend who seemed less and less confused to see him.

 

Bucky’s state at any given point was a difficult thing to ascertain. The dark, exhausted smudges under his eyes lightened and darkened from day to day, but never faded entirely. Sometimes he didn’t look quite so haunted, but mostly that only seemed to be replaced by resignation. Steve couldn’t help but wonder the gravity of what the Russians had done that Bucky could ever be resigned to this.

 

If S.H.I.E.L.D. was bothered by Steve’s frequent visits to where they kept Bucky, no one spoke up. While he suspected it was just that Bucky actually talked to him sometimes. Being used like that Steve wasn’t particularly happy about, but if it meant his best friend didn’t have to be alone in this place, he’d pay it.

 

Hard as he was working to find something, the sheer number of records he was wading through were enough to leave Steve’s eyes crossed. He needed a break for a minute. More importantly, he hadn’t forgotten the way Bucky had retreated from everything the night before. Whatever had been bothering his friend, Steve couldn’t bring himself to leave Bucky alone with that either.

 

While Bucky barely acknowledged Steve’s entrance, at least he wasn’t hiding in bed anymore. He’d apparently discovered the television set into the wall, and Steve looked up to find he was watching a documentary of some sort, judging by the black and white footage. Steve came closer, wondering if Bucky remembered enough of him to accept him sitting at the edge of the bed. Whether or was memory or apathy, perching on the bedding only netted Steve a passing glance. “Find something interesting?”

 

“I missed a lot,” Bucky replied evenly. He quietly stared at the television set a moment longer before adding, “Is this normal? Having these screens, I mean.”

 

“Televisions are pretty common. Most people have them these days, the way we used to have radios and such.” If he hadn’t been looking over, Steve might have missed the way Bucky’s eyes widened in something like recognition as he stared at the screen. Steve turned his head to see what it was, but commercials had cut in.

 

“Your plane went down.” Bucky wasn’t looking at the screen anymore.

 

“Yes.” Steve answered carefully. It was hard to know exactly what Bucky was getting at at any given moment.

 

“I remember.” Bucky’s throat worked as he met Steve’s eye. “I saw.”

 

“Buck... I think you might be a little bit confused,” Steve gently countered, not at all liking the anxiety in Bucky’s features the moment he’d said it.

 

“I’m not. I _remember_ ,” Bucky insisted. He ran a hand through his hair, but it looked more like he meant to use it as an anchor to keep from fidgeting or perhaps to keep himself grounded.

 

“I crashed in Antarctica, buddy. No one else was there.” Standing firm in that assertion was strangely difficult. He wanted to believe Bucky’s mind wasn’t betraying him because that was a different sort of unsettling. Bucky looked so earnest though, and what he was saying couldn’t possibly be accurate.

 

“I _know_ that. It’s not… that’s not…” Bucky’s lips pursed, and he sighed through his nose, clearly searching for words or an idea he didn’t have. “But it’s right there. I just can’t quite put it together.”

 

Well, at least maybe Bucky wasn’t crazy. Not crazy was reassuring. It was only marginally comforting though, because Bucky looked otherwise quite distressed, shoulders tense as he shifted a little further away. He was silent for a long while after that, and Steve didn’t quite know how to break it or change the subject. The television alleviated the need for conversation, and when the show came on, Steve settled in to watch it with Bucky.

 

It was long since over, and Bucky was flipping through channels when he finally piped up again. “It was all over the papers.”

 

“The crash?” Steve asked, not wanting to assume they were still talking about the same thing. He got a curt nod for his efforts.

 

“I thought you were going to come for me like always. It didn’t matter what they’d do to me because I knew you were going to come. They said you could never want me like this,” he murmured absently, waving at his metal arm that had probably been a ruined stump back then. “Course, I never believed them.”

 

Steve didn’t at all like where this was headed. There hadn’t been a day since he’d learned Bucky was alive that Steve didn’t blame himself for the nightmare visited upon his dearest friend. Somehow, that didn’t make the confirmation any less of a kick in the gut.

 

“The day the news hit the papers, they… they lined walls of my cell with it. They blared it over the speakers. They drowned out everything but the fact that I’d lost you.” Sad a story as it was, Bucky didn’t sound accusatory. He just looked weary, a mournful frown tugging the corners of his mouth downward. “It hurt worse than just about everything else they’d done at that point, but I can’t remember why.”

 

“Losing hope is a difficult thing, and if you thought I was going to save you, of course it’d be awful,” Steve acknowledged, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry I failed you so terribly.”

 

“ _No_. It’s not that.” Bucky shook his head. “Hope wasn’t what hurt so much to lose.”

 

Steve didn’t dare assume anything. Bucky’s expression had shuttered just as abruptly as everything else, his eyes drawn back to the television.  He’d curled up at some point, chin resting on his blanket covered knees. Was this progress? It felt like progress. It also felt like Steve’s heart breaking.

 

“Well… I’m here now,” Steve ventured. “I guess we both surprised everyone.”

 

If Bucky heard, he didn’t let on. Steve stayed for a while, hoping Bucky would perk up again. When it didn’t happen, he excused himself, deciding the best thing he could do for his friend was to find enough reason for S.H.I.E.L.D. to let him go.

 

 

Memories from before the war were few and far between. He didn’t remember many specific times, but he remembered generalities. Bucky could recall the sweltering heat of New York summers, and the tattered curtains over the windows in the little apartment he’d shared with Steve. He remembered the mouthwatering smell of popcorn at the movie theater, and the more than occasional night he’d lain awake worrying over the terrible, wet coughing of his best friend. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

 

It also made all of this harder. His intentions had been simple when Steve was only a person of importance to him on paper. He’d worked out a plan before he remembered the way he’d have followed Steve anywhere, or that he’d happily take a bullet for his friend a thousand times over (not that the guy seemed to need any help these days). Connection should have been welcome, stranded here the way he was. Instead, it was a new hurdle to get over.

 

Help for that came in the most unlikely of places. The more recent things - the ones that made his blood run cold, and that crawled terribly down his spine in the night – stuck with him. Terrible things had been done to him, but he’d done bad things too, hadn’t he? Oh sure, he could claim defense. The only lives he’d taken were those who meant him harm, but Bucky wasn’t sure that excused him. More and more often, memory came back in the form of lives he’d taken as they tried to turn him into their puppet. It was never the lives they meant for him to end, but there was so much blood on his hands, he fancied it was all right there in the grooves between his finger plates.

 

It unraveled him, but it bolstered him too. He trusted Steve, and that might have been a happy discovery under other circumstances. If Steve said no one here was his enemy, he could believe that. It was all the more reason he needed to leave though, not to escape these people, but to protect them. The things he’d done felt more and more unforgivable, and the horrors they’d visited upon his body and mind did nothing to assuage the guilt.

 

He wished he could stay. Maybe that was an overstatement. He wished he could stay near the few good things he had left, but leaving was the only redeemable thing he could think to do. Steve deserved an explanation or a warning, but even with most of his memory in shambles, Bucky knew better. It was his burden to bear, so as the days slipped by, he forced on a smile, and tried very hard not to take too much refuge in the familiarity he found in Steve’s presence.

 

The last night he slept in the room where S.H.I.E.L.D. was holding him, he dreamt of another cell. It was cold and wet, and there was blood dried on the sheets. He laid on his stomach, trying not to disturb the lacerations across his back – retribution for his most recent rebellion.

 

For a moment, he thought he was imagining it all. Bucky (was his name Bucky? It was slipping away more and more) woke to the soft hiss and crackle of an out of tune radio station. He could hear something, but the words were garbled, backed by the disjointed melody that he knew would have been one of those patriotic, pro-armed forces tunes he’d heard back home at every enlistment fair. Now, it just sounded like some brass instruments that couldn’t finish a line.

 

He gritted his teeth as he pushed himself onto his elbows, searching for the offending radio. What he found made his stomach bottom out. They must have taken more out of him than he’d realize for him to sleep through the nightmare they left for him. The front page of some paper had been pasted all over his cell, heralding the death of Captain America. Even the floors and ceiling weren’t immune to the news. There was nowhere he could look and escape the awful realization, and though he closed his eyes, the radio just got louder. Steve Rogers was missing, presumed dead in his efforts to take down Hydra.

 

It wasn’t being stranded here that gnawed at Bucky’s heart. It was knowing he’d failed. He’d followed Steve because… because, well… you look out for the people that matter, and no one had mattered more to Bucky. All this time, he thought he’d been holding out for his best friend to find him, but it was Steve who needed saving.

 

When Bucky well and truly awoke, there were no newspapers, no radio announcements, nothing but the soft, hushed sounds of his own breathing. He smiled grimly in the dark. He’d failed to protect Steve once. He wouldn’t do it again.


	5. Chapter 5

“Your boy is a difficult one to get a pulse on.” The words were conversational, but Natasha’s expression was grave as she handed over the file. It was thick, almost too thick it seemed like, for a failed project. Dread coiled in Steve’s stomach as he took it from her, hoping this wasn’t just going to make the situation worse.

 

“I can’t thank you enough,” Steve ventured, watching the corner of her lips flick up just a fraction. As good as she was at concealing her thoughts, it had to be intentional.

 

“Sure you can, Rogers,” Natasha drawled, as if she had all the time in the world. Steve had tried to keep tabs on her mission – _their_ mission before he’d run off – but Romanoff was a slippery thing, and she’d shut him out. He was beginning to suspect she just didn’t want him feeling like he needed to come back, and the words she added only nudged his thoughts further in that direction. “You can take this, and you can do the right thing with it.”

 

“I will. Of course I will,” Steve promised. He’d already decided, no matter what the file contained, that the right thing was to use it to get Bucky out of this place. What little progress they’d made had seemed to slide backward in a way that worried Steve. Bucky rarely said a word to him, and what little came out was confused or disjointed. Steve could only imagine how difficult it was to find one’s way back to reality in that terrible little room.

 

Focused on Bucky or not, he had to ask. “The mission. Do you need me back?”

 

The way Natasha frowned, Steve wasn’t sure if she was hiding something, or if she was just insulted by him suggesting she might need his help. She crossed her arms and leaned in the doorframe, managing to look quite unassuming for someone who could probably kill him five different ways before he took his next breath. “If I need your help, you’ll be the first to know.”

 

He knew better than to argue, least of all when she was already shooing him off. One of these days, when Bucky was stable and out of this mess, he just hoped he could repay the effort she’d gone to. For now, the best he could do was to let her go (as if he had any choice in the matter). After all, he had an awful lot of reading ahead of him, and judging by Natasha’s demeanor, it wasn’t pretty.

 

Not pretty was an understatement. Steve scanned over the first document in the folder, confirmation that Hydra had found Bucky first, capturing him with the intent to create a weapon. Only, they’d taken out the Hydra bases one after another. Where had they had left to bring him but the facility Steve broke into? He thought back to Bucky’s confusing insistence he’d seen something and wondered just how close he’d been to his fallen friend that day. There was nothing for it now, of course.

 

_Pursuant to our discussion this morning, attached are copies of the procedures employed in attempting to gain compliance from the subject. The subject continues to resist efforts to ensure compliance. You will find an itemized list of efforts expended and the observed response. Any direction in this matter would be welcome._

Electrocution, starvation, sensory deprivation. Steve pushed the paper aside at “simulated drowning”. It was no wonder Bucky seemed so off. If he remembered even a fraction of what Steve was reading in the first report of this rather large file… The pictures made Steve ill. If there’d been any question who this subject was, he’d have known that face anywhere. Even starving and missing an arm, Bucky was recognizable. The black and white photos couldn’t hide the trauma. Dark bruises mottled his bare skin in some pictures, and blood marred it in others. They seemed to have denied him any semblance of dignity judging by the lack of clothing and the way they’d called him it, as if he were no more consequential than someone’s kitchen table.

 

_Agent Odebrecht has thus far been unsuccessful with the subject. Attempts to relieve it of its past memories have only served to confuse and anger the subject. It still refers to itself intermittently as “Bucky” despite threats to its person for doing so._

_The serum aspect of experimentation has been a success. The subject’s body thus far has not rejected our replacement limb. Lacerations and bruising appear to heal at a rapid rate. We will escalate our efforts to ascertain at what point the subject’s body can no longer compensate for the damage done._

 

Steve was furious all over again, half tempted to go looking for the agents involved. Old and frail or not, he’d happily repay them for what they’d done to Bucky. His anger and drive for retribution was an impotent thing though, judging by what Bucky accomplished with an addled mind and ruined body.

 

_During conditioning this morning at 06:00, the subject overpowered its entire team of handlers. The subject was subdued, but not before we sustained heavy casualties. While the serum has been a success, the conditioning methods currently available to us have had little impact. The subject shifts, sometimes quite abruptly, between non-responsiveness and volatility. Currently, it is being held in cryostasis as we await your command. Given the poor return on investment thus far, it is my recommendation that we restrain the subject indefinitely or leave it in cryostasis until such time that we have improved our conditioning methods._

 

For a second, Steve hoped that was the end of it. Bucky fought back and Hydra gave up. It sounded preposterous of course, mostly because it was. The next pages cleared up any question on the matter. It was more of the same, and then it was worse. Bucky was in and out of cryostasis with Hydra first and then the Russians (infiltrated by Hydra). Inevitably, they would torture him until something snapped, or until he caused too massive a loss of life to be worth the effort. Then, it would be back on ice until they had something new to try. The man in the weapons cache had had his mind wiped 358 times, and that was assuming the reports documented each one. Somehow, it seemed a miracle anything came back to Bucky at all.

 

 

If he could have thought of any way around what was coming, Bucky would have jumped at it. Steve had only been kind to him, and what little he remembered seemed consistent with that viewpoint too. Steve mattered to him in an abstract, disjointed sort of way, but that was precisely why he had to do this.

 

Overpowering Captain America promised to be a challenge, but as far as Bucky could tell, they were somewhat evenly matched. They would have been, at least, if Bucky were in better shape. As it was, Bucky was counting on the element of surprise. No one else was liable to be much of a problem, so if he could just knock Steve out long enough to escape, Bucky was fairly certain he’d be home free. Hopefully. Assuming they didn’t think he was trying to hurt them or something. It was a chance he was going to have to take though, so he took a breath and steeled himself, waiting for Steve to open the door.

 

It was an hour later when he finally heard the rhythmic thudding of footsteps down the hall. It was a cadence and echo he’d become quite familiar with over the last week (maybe two? He couldn’t keep track of the days in this place.) Bucky swallowed the lump in his throat and ran over the plan in his mind again. The door always locked behind Steve, so he was going to have to move quickly enough to keep it open, but not so quickly that Steve would go on the offensive. There was the camera to think about too. Maybe he could lure Steve out of its line of sight, if he just knew where exactly that was.

 

There was the telltale snick of the door handle though, and no time to revise anything now. Steve poked his head in with that damnably understanding smile he always greeted Bucky with, like it was completely acceptable that he was some sort of murderous amnesiac. It broke his heart and made him want to punch Steve in equal measure, because whatever it was his old friend thought he was seeing, Bucky wasn’t it anymore. No amount of wishing or caring or trying to help could change a moment of what had happened.

 

It was different this time, though, and the change set Bucky’s nerves on edge. Steve propped the door open, and when Bucky looked down, he was holding a change of clothes. They were real clothes this time, and not the hospital scrub type pants and shirt S.H.I.E.L.D. had condemned him to. There were shoes too, and that was lucky. Bucky hadn’t been thrilled about fleeing barefoot, not knowing a thing about the terrain or weather outside. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Steve knew what he was up to, and was helping.

 

“My partner found what we needed to get S.H.I.E.L.D. to release you,” Steve was saying, the words punctuated by his waving a thick, brown folder at Bucky. Wasn’t that good news? There was an edge to Steve’s voice that suggested maybe it wasn’t, but maybe that was just because of what it was he’d found. The reports would probably confirm he wasn’t faking, but Bucky couldn’t help but wonder if Steve had read about the terrible things he’d done too. Surely, he had, and perhaps a realization that Bucky was just a time bomb in his best friend’s skin had finally sunk in.

 

Funny, Bucky had already been resigned to losing this one tenuous thread he had, tethering him to the world. It had been one thing to be willing to sacrifice his own small comfort for Steve’s benefit. It was something else entirely to see that face and think it was being pulled out from under him. His voice rasped in his throat, a small, tentative thing. “What happens to me now?”

 

Whatever he’d thought, Steve just kept on throwing him off balance. All at once, there were clothes in his lap, and Steve’s expression brightened considerably. “Well, that depends. There’s a lot to adjust to, so I thought you might be more comfortable staying with me until you get settled and decide what you’d like to do. Of course, if you’d rather, I imagine they’d set you up with a place of your own and all…”

 

While Steve was rambling, Bucky was thinking. This was maybe exactly the out he needed to slip away and protect Steve without having to pick a fight with him. Going with would hopefully land them somewhere without S.H.I.E.L.D. backup. Maybe Bucky wouldn’t even have to knock him out. The guy had to sleep sometime, and if Bucky wasn’t locked up, he could probably just slip away.

 

“No, it’s fine. Staying with you. That’s fine,” Bucky hastily agreed. The less resistance he put up now, the better. With any luck, this would help him get his bearings a little before he made his escape. Even if it didn’t, at least he’d have shoes.

 

 

Though Steve didn’t begrudge the time he’d spent on base trying to free his friend, he was thrilled to be on their way home. Bucky’s silence was a stark contrast to the friend Steve had known before this whole mess, but it wasn’t unusual. Aside from sporadically grilling him for answers about this or that thing, Bucky rarely spoke to him at all. He was alive and in one piece though, more or less. They’d work out the details from there.

 

While Bucky didn’t say much, his body language spoke volumes. His whole body tensed when they encountered turbulence, and he seemed to spend a lot of his time fiddling with the seatbelt restraining him. Steve had tried to give him the folder just so that he’d have something to do, but Bucky had waved it of with a frown and a soft insistence that he didn’t want it. That was probably just as well. As ill as it made Steve to read, he couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be subjected to what Bucky had.

 

That they made it to the apartment felt like a miracle when all was said and done. The plane they were in landed at another S.H.I.E.L.D. base rather than a public airport. The minute the door opened out into the hangar, Bucky went stiff as a board, and Steve swore he could hear the soft whirring of machinery as the delicate plates of his friend’s metal fingers clenched. Maybe he thought this was a betrayal of sorts, or maybe the hangar reminded him of somewhere else. Steve might have asked, but Bucky practically stalked his way off the plane, looking around as if any dark corner might hold the enemy. He didn’t seem to like the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents much better, given the way he frowned and put his metal arm between him and them.

 

Steve wasn’t sure how they made it to the car without incident. The black SUV piqued his interest in a way that Steve hadn’t seem him respond to anything else, and for a minute, Bucky seemed very much his old self. He walked around the vehicle, taking it all in, and disappointment clouded his features when his onslaught of questions were met with confusion from the driver, who had no idea what was under the hood. Steve made a note to delve into this a little further. Anything that brought his friend back to the surface was worth hanging on to, as far as Steve was concerned.

  
Talkative as Bucky had been around the car, he quieted down again once they were inside it. There was less of the nervous energy Steve had seen on the plane, and a great deal more focus. He’d been in those shoes once. He knew how disorienting it was. He’d nearly left New York City. Steve had gotten as far as looking at apartments in D.C. when he’d been called away on the mission Natasha was currently wrapping up. He was glad for that now, holding out some hope that the city would help Bucky along.

 

“Where are we?” Apparently it wasn’t doing much good so far.

 

“This is New York City. We grew up here,” Steve coaxed, waiting for some sign of recognition.

 

“Seems busy,” Bucky sighed out, and if there was anything familiar as he stared out the window, he didn’t let on. “Was it like this back then?”

 

“Not so much. I guess a lot changed while we were sleeping,” Steve admitted, wishing he had something, _anything_ to go on. They’d had such a rapport once, and knowing on paper what had made Bucky like this only made it worse. He wanted to reach Bucky. He should have been able to, but for every small inkling of hope he found, the rest of the time Bucky looked at him like he was a stranger.

 

 

Not for the first time, Bucky was wondering if he’d made the wrong call. The trip was long and confusing, and he felt more like cargo than a willing traveler. Oh sure, Steve asked him if he was alright and pushed papers at him and tried to keep him distracted, but no one told him what was going on. It was hard enough to call up his voice and ask for answers when he knew the right questions to ask, but this was uncharted territory. Every step seemed more foreign than the last, and when he finally saw something he recognized in a round about way (not that that looked like any car he’d ever seen), he’d just asked the wrong questions there too.

 

Quiet was probably better. If he didn’t speak, he couldn’t slip and let on what he was planning. If he wasn’t distracted talking to Steve, maybe he could memorize the parts of the city, though they were going by much too quickly. The buildings all looked the same and the streets all ran together. He wasn’t sure how anyone managed to get from one place to another in all the bustle and… noise.

 

Steve was staring at him again, and something about that made him ache. It was like Steve was seeing a ghost, and maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth. He felt like an imposter, like a specter inhabiting Bucky’s skin and wearing his face and never quite managing to put on a convincing act. Bucky tried, but the moment he asked where they were, it was clear he’d messed up. How could he not recognize where they’d grown up? It was one thing not to remember details, but if he couldn’t even know he was looking at _home_ , what did that make him? There were fragments here and there, but all the truths that made up Bucky Barnes were lost to him.

 

He didn’t get much chance to dwell on it, because the car abruptly came to a stop in front of one of the city’s absurdly tall buildings. Steve herded him out of the car in that maddeningly patient way of his that made Bucky want to scream. Bucky didn’t scream. He didn’t make a sound, and to his credit, he didn’t balk too much when he was steered towards the door of the building they’d stopped in front of. He swallowed a few times, but didn’t panic when they stepped into the elevator and it closed in too tightly around them. How did anyone breathe like this? Clearly, it was just one of his broken parts though, because Steve seemed fine and not troubled at all. Letting on that he was struggling was out of the question, so Bucky just nervously watching one floor light up after another.

 

Thirty-seven. That was an egregious number of floors to have to go up to get to Steve’s apartment. Was it near the top? Bucky hadn’t counted the floors from outside. The elevator opened though, and he moved on automatic, following Steve to the door of his apartment.

 

“Here we are,” Steve encouraged, opening the door to usher Bucky in. “Home sweet home.”

 

It didn’t feel like home. No. That wasn’t quite right. It felt like a home. Everything about it screamed at him that this was Steve’s refuge, and that made him smile, just for a second. It didn’t feel like his home though, and it shouldn’t. He was just passing through. At least it wasn’t the cell where they’d kept him though, and the way Bucky saw it, he probably wouldn’t be here long enough to care.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

“I’ll get some fresh sheets and set you up in the bedroom.”

 

Bucky’s brows pulled together as he watched Steve wander off to the hall closet. It was disconcerting how easily Steve just let him in like they were closer than family. They maybe had been once, but Steve hardly knew him now. Yet, here they were. Briefly, Bucky wondered if he ought to be suspicious, except no. Steve wasn’t the dangerous one in this apartment.

 

“Where are you gonna sleep?” Bucky heard himself ask. There wasn’t another bedroom, and it was important for reasons he wasn’t sure how to articulate. Steve shouldn’t be put out on his account. He abruptly remembered late nights and coughing that wouldn’t stop, and a bone deep fear that eventually it would, but for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t just about the nonsensical way some part of him kept caring about Steve, even when he couldn’t remember why. Bucky had looked out the window of Steve’s bedroom. Thirty-seven floors was an excessively long way down, and he hadn’t spotted a fire escape. That meant he was going to have to slip out the front door, which would be much easier if Steve would just sleep in the bedroom.

 

“The couch pulls out. I’ll be fine,” Steve called back. Really, for someone who had no idea what was up, he was doing a remarkably good job of creating difficulties for Bucky.

 

“If the couch pulls out, I’ll take that. I’m not putting you out of your room,” Bucky insisted. Insisting on anything felt foreign to him. Perhaps they’d conditioned most of the fight out of him. Mostly, arguing just make his stomach turn uncomfortably, waiting for a pain that never came.

 

“You sure? I really don’t mind,” Steve started, but if he meant to say more, he stopped. Bucky met his eye, even though it almost physically hurt to do so, and he breathed a sigh of relief when instead of speaking again, Steve just nodded his head, handing over the sheets. “It’s just the lever on the side. I’ll get you a couple of pillows.”

 

The evening was an emotional gymnastics session in ways S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t been. He’d known where he stood there. He’d been a prisoner, or maybe a piece of evidence, something for them to study and fear. Aside from the occasional test, they left him be with his uncomfortably sterile looking room and slapped together bits of memory. Steve though, that was something else. That was talking. It wasn’t interrogation or debriefing, just normal conversation, like there was still a human being in his skin. It left Bucky feeling like cracked glass, like any wrong move and he might crumble entirely and expose the lie.

 

There was pizza at some point, and some part of him that must have remembered what life was like if not the details was quite startled that it came to their door. Bucky had nearly climbed the curtains, ready to lash out at whatever intruder came through the door. The only intruder was preposterously cheesy and not particularly well armed though, and eventually the racing of Bucky’s heart slowed as he watched Steve grab plates from the kitchen.  Steve hadn’t laughed at his overreaction, instead fixing that damnably sympathetic look on him again that made Bucky want to melt through the floor.

 

The pizza was long since gone, and the clock on the wall suggested it was well past midnight when Steve finally got up. He insisted on putting the sheets on the pullout bed, which somehow made Bucky feel worse about the whole thing. It wasn’t as if he was going to get much use out of them. He was just thinking over how long he’d probably want to wait before slipping away when Steve’s voice interrupted. “You sure you’re going to be alright out here?”

 

“I’m fine.” If Bucky was a bit terse, it was mostly that he’d spoken more this evening than maybe the whole rest of the time he’d been awake. Steve had a knack for getting him talking, but the aftermath was rather overwhelming. Everything felt raw, like someone had rubbed the same patch of skin far too many times, only that patch of skin was all of him, inside and out.

 

There was that look again, and Bucky swore if Steve asked him if he was okay again, he was really definitely going to scream, but the question never came. Steve only smiled, lopsided and weary. “G’night Buck.”

 

Five minutes after Steve left, Bucky saw the light under the door turn out. So as not to rouse suspicion, Bucky turned out the lights in the living room too. The light coming in one of the windows was enough to find his way to the door.

 

Fifteen minutes after Steve left, the apartment was still silent. Bucky slipped off the pullout couch and crept to Steve’s door. The bathroom was right there. If he got caught, he had plenty of excuses. The only thing he could hear through the door though, was the soft, even sounds of Steve’s breathing.

 

Bucky waited another hour, just to be certain Steve was well and truly asleep. Steve didn’t come out when he slipped away from the couch again, and didn’t interrupt when he very carefully turned the knob for the deadbolt. He didn’t emerge when Bucky quietly turned the door handle, easing the door free of the rubber seal around its edges. For a second, Bucky stood there with the door half open, expecting to have to come up with an excuse, but there was no sign that Steve had woken up at all. Letting out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding, Bucky slipped out the door, quietly pulling it closed behind him.

 

The second Bucky was out of the apartment, he traded stealth for speed. He didn’t trust handling the elevator alone, so he went for the stairs. The concrete that encased the flights of steps wasn’t all that much less confining, but it was enough that if he moved quickly, Bucky didn’t even have time to think about the way it felt like they were pressing in.

 

Thirty-seven flights was a long way down, longer when traversing by staircase. It appeared some modicum of luck was on his side though, because no one was waiting for him at the bottom. Maybe Steve hadn’t even figured out he was gone, and that was for the best. Really, it was. There was nothing between Bucky and the freedom of…

 

Of what? He’d been so concerned with getting the danger of his existence away from Steve, Bucky really hadn’t thought about after. With resources like S.H.I.E.L.D., staying in the city was out of the question, not that he was sure he wanted to. Maybe his old self had liked the New York City he grew up in, but now it was full of dark corners and people whose motives he couldn’t guess at, and it left Bucky wanting to put as much distance between him and it as he could. Even if there were busses running this time of night though, he realized as he turned a corner away from Steve’s apartment building that he didn’t know where it was, and he didn’t exactly have the money to board. For now, he’d just put some distance between Steve and himself. In the morning, he’d find directions and figure out where to head next.

 

Bucky walked for what must have been an hour, seeking out some unobtrusive shelter. He found it in the shape of an abandoned building that felt like it really ought to have been familiar. The old theater was noticeable despite the lack of care, at least from the outside. He reached for the door handle with his metal hand, furtively checking the street to make sure no one saw what he was doing, but this hour of the night, the neighborhood was largely empty.

 

Whatever pomp the outside had maintained, the inside felt… well, about like Bucky did. Even in the meager light, he could see the way the paint peeled and plaster chipped, leaving what would once have been a gorgeous building looking quite rundown. Luxurious red carpets and seating had faded and mildewed with disuse, and idly, Bucky wondered how much longer it could be let go before the whole thing would crumble from the inside, bringing the shell of the building right down on top of it.

 

Whatever sort of mess the place was, it was a roof and plenty of walls to keep out the cold wind outside. Bucky wondered if he ought to have brought a blanket or at least some kind of supplies, but no. Steve had done enough for him already. Bucky couldn’t have brought himself to steal from the one kind person he’d encountered since waking up.

 

The heavy velvet curtain meant to provide a backdrop to the stage had long since fallen, and Bucky decided that mildew or not, it would at least be warm. He carefully picked his way through the rows of chairs and bits of wall decoration that had fallen to litter the aisle, climbing onto the dark stage. There was very little visibility, but he managed only to trip once before hunkering down on the stage. Bucky sat rather than lying down entirely, curled up in the remains of the curtain. Stressful a day as it had been, it wasn’t long before he fell asleep.

 

_“Pull the trigger.”_

_How many days had they done this? The blood of the handler he’d shot still stained the porous concrete floor of his cell. There was a woman on her knees again, pleading in a language he was understanding more and more of. They’d beaten him within an inch of his life for his rebellion, and despite how quickly he seemed to be healing these days, that lacerations on his back still stung each time they rubbed against the rough spun shirt they’d put him in. If he shot at the handler, they would kill him this time, and he didn’t want to die._

_“Pull the trigger, soldier,” the handler prompted more sharply. The soldier lifted the gun, heart clutching frantically at what little humanity remained in him. He’d had a name once, but it slipped away from him like sand between splayed fingers._

_The woman sobbed as he leveled the gun right between her eyes, finger shaking against the trigger. Behind him, the handler’s voice had risen. “I_ said _pull the trigger.”_

_Words had long since failed him. They didn’t like when he spoke without prompting, and there were more important battles to choose. Even now, he couldn’t conjure up a sentence to relay his defiance. His gaze only settled on the frightened woman, exhausted and half broken as he lowered his gun, minutely shaking his head._

_Abruptly, a shot rang out, and the woman fell with an agonized wail. More blood on the floor, and they’d leave this too, likely along with the body. The handler glared at him and holstered his gun. “Nothing you do will save them. All it means is that you both pay.”_

_It was all the warning he got before he was dragged from the cell, and the rest was lost in fire and agony._

Bucky woke up whimpering, clutching at the curtain, but there was no one to hear him.

 

 

It was nearly sunrise when Steve discovered Bucky’s absence. He came out to the kitchen for a drink of water to find the couch empty, and the bed still made. There was no telling how long it had been since Bucky’s departure, or how far he might have gotten, and there were certainly no clues where his escape might have taken him.

 

The whole situation only hammered home how little he knew of Bucky anymore. Oh sure, he could chalk it up to Bucky’s scattered memories, but that he hadn’t realized Bucky wanted to go was a wound he couldn’t quite shake off. They’d been making progress, he’d thought, but clearly he hadn’t had the right of it at all.

 

As difficult an adjustment as the modern world had been, Steve couldn’t imagine what it must be like for Bucky to be in it alone and without resources. He hated to take advantage of that, but there was no way he was leaving his friend to navigate New York City, penniless and completely unequipped to deal with the modern world.

 

The only thing worse than calling in favors was admitting to Tony Stark that maybe he could use some help. Going to S.H.I.E.L.D. would cause unnecessary trouble, and the only other person he could think of who might help was still on the other side of the world. Steve had considered just going out and looking, but it was a big city, and there was no telling if Bucky was still even in it.

 

By some miracle, Tony answered his phone, albeit groggily and with a lot of complaining. The complaining was really the best of it, because as soon as Steve told him the trouble, complaining turned into self congratulating and poking fun, and Steve really wanted to shove a sock in his mouth just to shut him up. For all his ego, Tony was every bit as brilliant and resourceful as he thought he was though, and had access to so much surveillance that Steve might have wondered under other circumstances if the method used to get his answers was strictly legal. Legal or not, Bucky’s lack of knowledge of the modern world meant he didn’t know to hide from the cameras on buildings and traffic signals and probably half the city when it came down to it. Steve recognized the theater immediately. They’d gone to see a show there once very long ago.

 

Steve managed a thank you, purely because he was too polite not to. He didn’t stay on the phone long enough for Tony to say anything else, instead, tearing out of the building after Bucky. After all, if he was that eager to get away, he probably wouldn’t stay at his current location for long. Much as he’d have liked to think it was nostalgia that brought Bucky to that place, it was far more likely just a matter of convenience, so Steve tread carefully, slowing down a few feet from the theater door. The lock was quite obviously broken, and if he’d had any question as to whether Bucky had been there, it looked to be true.

 

The air was cold and dank when he stepped into the old theater, and Steve really wished he’d remembered to bring a flashlight. Phones did… well, just about everything these days though, and the light on it was sufficient to keep from tripping. Beautiful as the place had been, there was an air of sorrow about it now, as time claimed the glamourous veneer of it all. It felt rather like stepping into a crypt, only the bodies were crumbled statues and dirty, faded seats.

 

Steve searched most of the building before he got close enough to shed light on the stage. In the heap of the curtain and its fallen, but still attached curtain rod, he nearly missed his friend, curled up in the fabric. Oh, that was just… whatever had made Bucky leave, he deserved much better than _this_. Quietly, Steve made his way up the steps, crouching beside Bucky’s dozing form. “Bucky?”

 

All at once, Bucky sprang into action, metal fingers curled around Steve’s wrist.  His blue grey eyes widened in shock, and as suddenly as he’d grabbed at Steve, he let go, shuffling further away. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I was looking for you,” Steve answered honestly. He ignored dirt under his knees, kneeling beside his friend.

 

Bucky looked away, his voice so quiet that Steve almost didn’t catch what he was saying. “To take me back?”

 

“No.” Well, maybe that wasn’t an entirely true answer. He hoped Bucky would come back. It was true in the sense that Bucky probably meant though, and Steve was quick to explain himself. “To find out why you left.”

 

For a little while, it seemed Bucky wasn’t going to answer at all. His jaw worked, judging from the soft movement of bone and muscle under flesh. When he finally piped up, his explanation was sparse and weary. “I’m dangerous.”

 

“Dangerous?” Steve prodded. Thus far, Bucky hadn’t done anyone any harm at all, even after what S.H.I.E.L.D. had put him through, so it was a hard bit of logic to follow.

 

“I remember… a little of what happened and… and what I did. There was that tone again, soft and defeated and the way he looked when he met Steve’s eye made Steve want to cry in grief for whatever terrible experience had produced it. Bucky shook his head, looking away. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else, so I left.”

 

Steve knew he had to tread carefully. Bucky was skittish at the best of times, and he didn’t want his friend running off before they at least tried to sort this. “Okay.”

 

That got Bucky’s attention. His hair hung in his face mostly, except for the piece he pushed out of his eyes – only for it to slide right back a moment later. His lips pursed warily, but at least he hadn’t run off. “Okay?”

 

“Okay,” Steve repeated. “Let’s say I believe you when you say you’re dangerous. Not saying I do, but if I did. What exactly do you think sleeping in an abandoned theater is accomplishing?”

 

Bucky’s brows knit in confusion. “I can’t hurt someone if I’m not around them.”

 

“Who, me?” Steve asked. Bucky was clever, and Steve hoped that reason would work where nothing else did.

 

“It was the only way I could think to protect you.” That was a very differently complicated statement, one that Steve filed away to dwell over when Bucky wasn’t freezing and making himself be homeless.

 

“so, it’s better to endanger the civilians who might encounter you?” Steve reached out again to rest a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, and though his friend flinched, he didn’t pull away.

 

“I’m going to leave. I’ll go somewhere with fewer people,” Bucky protested, but he sounded less sure now.

 

“Do you think, if you really are dangerous, that there’s anyone better equipped to stop you from doing anything terrible than I am?” Steve tried to keep his tone matter of fact. He’d noticed the more gentle he was, the more skittish Bucky was, so he tried very hard to rely on reason.

 

Bucky frowned at him and said nothing, so Steve kept talking. “You were trying to protect me. That means a lot to me. It does. Now, let me return the favor, alright? Come back with me and we’ll work it out.”

 

“And if I don’t want to?” Bucky asked warily, his eyes flicking to watch Steve’s every move.

 

“Then don’t. I wish you would because you deserve better than this, but you’re not my prisoner. You’re not anyone’s prisoner. You’re my friend, and I want to help you if you’ll let me.”

 

Bucky tilted his head up, staring at the ruined hardware overhead, or what little of it was visible in the dark. “I don’t trust me very much.”

 

Okay. Okay, he could work with that. Steve cleared his throat, drawing Bucky’s gaze back to his face. “Do you trust me?”

 

“I don’t have any reason to. I don’t know you.” Bucky started forcefully, but he trailed off, a small frown pulling at his lips. “I think so, though.”

 

Steve smiled and stood up, immediately offering a hand to his friend. “Then trust me to keep us both safe.”

 

“…and if it doesn’t work?” Bucky was staring at his hand like it might bite him.

 

“I’m not going to stop you from leaving. This is your choice, no matter what.” It was one of the harder things Steve had had to come to terms with, but it was what he had to work with, and it seemed to put Bucky’s mind at ease in a way that none of his offers to help did.

 

Bucky sat where he was a few moments longer before finally reaching to grab Steve’s hand. “Okay.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Instinct put him at war with himself. Steve was the only familiar thing in this city, and for that, he wanted to stick close. Steve was also a tether Bucky wasn’t certain he wanted, and it was hard to know if that made him the enemy. In the end, Bucky stuck with a middle ground, keeping in step with Steve, with a little space between them.

Now that he wasn’t actively running, Bucky had the chance to take in their surroundings. It wasn’t an entirely positive experience. He didn’t remember enough to have any real comparison, but the world felt loud and crowded in. Any dark corner could be deadly and there were so _many_ of them that Bucky really couldn’t fathom the way Steve moved so calmly. His eyes weren’t darting off to every intrusive thing the way Bucky’s wanted to, and he hardly even seemed to hear the anxious din of conversation and car horns that squirmed uncomfortably down Bucky’s spine.

“How do you deal with this?” he finally ventured, at his wit’s end as they crossed a street in a sea of people. They were an unknown entity, and Bucky’s heart raced at a memory he couldn’t quite grasp.

Steve’s face lit up quite noticeably, though Bucky couldn’t think for the life of him why. The edges of Steve’s mouth tipped upwards, and the corners of his eyes crinkled a bit. Confusing as it was, the expression was a stark contrast to all the seriousness they’d both been dealing in. Also… it was nice. Nice enough that he almost didn’t catch Steve’s answer. “It takes some getting used to, but I don’t know. It’s home.”

“Doesn’t feel much like home,” Bucky mumbled. “Maybe if I remembered more.”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of faulty memory, Buck.” Steve’s expression evened out, but there was still something soft in it. Moments like these, it was hard to reconcile Steve Rogers with the super soldier Bucky had read about. “Brooklyn’s a lot different these days. I hardly recognize it myself sometimes.”

“Then why’d you stay?” Bucky pressed. It felt important, even if he couldn’t put his finger on why.

Bucky wasn’t looking at the crowded streets and dark alleys anymore. He was watching Steve, whose brows had furrowed, expression drawn and strained. He looked so sad just then, Bucky very nearly found himself reaching out, the instinct to stand by a friend he couldn’t remember momentarily overruling everything else. Steve didn’t seem to notice the way Bucky’s hand lifted, or the way it dropped away as he responded. “It’s not just Brooklyn, Bucky. The whole world went on without us, so as foreign as it is, Brooklyn’s the closest thing I can get to going home. After… well you were gone. Everyone and everything I knew was pretty well lost to me. I needed a reminder of what I was fighting for.”

 _Newspapers_ _coating his cell, inescapably bombarding him with news of the death of Captain America_. Bucky nodded, falling into step a bit more evenly with Steve. Funny, he used to have to shorten his pace just a bit to make sure Steve didn’t fall behind. Somewhere along the way, Steve had turned them down a quieter street, and though it didn’t really dispel the tension Bucky felt, it eased it just a little. “Did you find it?”

“I didn’t find what I was looking for,” Steve admitted. The words seemed confusingly at odds with the even warmth of his tone. It didn’t sound like the defeat he was copping to. There was that smile again though, and Bucky was sure that was closer to home than anything else he’d seen in this city. “but I found what I needed.”

Bucky was just settling when reality hit him, crashing down like the blade of a guillotine. He hadn’t fled because he’d forgotten why he should stay. Agreeing to entrust Steve with making sure he didn’t hurt anyone was a matter of practicality, not fondness, and it was best to keep things that way. Until he remembered the circumstances of the last few decades, the best thing he could do for them both was to not foster any unnecessary closeness. Reluctantly, Bucky put a little more space between them, quietly following Steve back to the apartment.

 

 

The first few days were nerve wracking. Despite his efforts and Bucky’s agreement, it was impossible to tell if he’d really convinced his old friend to stay. Though he kept refusing offer of the bedroom, Bucky had a tendency to make himself scarce more often than not. Mornings often confronted Steve with a pull out bed full of pristine sheets, and no sign of Bucky anywhere.

It was a week before he realized Bucky wasn’t actually leaving. Curiosity got the better of him, and he told himself he was just following his old friend to try to help. Mostly, that was probably even true. Steve followed Bucky to the stairwell and… up, all the way to the roof. The fact that the lock was already broken suggested this wasn’t the first time Bucky had fled up here.

He should leave. Really. It wasn’t fair to spy on someone who he’d insisted wasn’t a prisoner here. It wasn’t as if Bucky was gazing mournfully over the edge of the roof, or anything of the sort. Really, it just looked like he’d created an obstacle course of sorts for himself. Of course. Steve should have known the apartment was probably too confining. He’d tried inviting Bucky along on his morning runs twice, but all he’d gotten for his efforts was a frown and a shake of his friend’s head.

Stasis certainly hadn’t made his friend any less fit. Bucky moved with a sort of grace that reminded Steve of Natasha. It wasn’t quite as brash as Steve remembered during the war, but maybe that was just the grief of his own failure to save Bucky coloring his memory. The arm was the most fascinating part. If he hadn’t read about it and known how heavy the limb had to be, he’d have never guessed.

Really, though. He was leaving. Now that he’d assured himself Bucky was neither running away nor endangering his life, there was no excuse to hang around in the shadows. Steve was just turning away when Bucky’s voice, still a bit gravely with disuse, called out, “You planning to hide in the stairwell all day?”

Steve emerged from said stairwell looking rather sheepish. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Bucky never gave him the chance. “What happened to not being a prisoner?”

“You’re not,” Steve protested.

“You’re spying on me.” Bucky crossed his arms, eyes narrowing as he looked at Steve.

“Not because I don’t trust you. I wanted to make sure you were alright. I…”

“ _Don’t_. You figured out living in the future on your own. Don’t act like I need a keeper to manage it.” Bucky’s jaw worked, and it seemed like he might add something else, but no words came.

Dealing with Bucky was always a bit of an emotional seesaw, but his friend’s ire wasn’t entirely uncalled for. Devoid of the memories that might have tied them together, it made sense the Bucky would read the worst into his actions. That didn’t mean Steve had to let him keep thinking it. “You don’t need a keeper. You could go it alone. I don’t doubt your ability for a second. The thing is… you don’t _have_ to.”

Bucky sighed through his nose, his expression shuttered, as if he were regarding a dangerous stranger. He didn’t look like he intended to say anything further, so Steve resigned himself to retreat. If Bucky wanted to be alone, he should be allowed that. Steve offered a tight smile as he turned away. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He was early back in the stairwell when Bucky piped up behind him again.

“The apartment gets stifling, and going down there,” Bucky paused, gesturing towards the streets below, “is a lot.”

“You don’t know if you can trust them?” Steve asked. He’d seen the way Bucky eyeballed every passerby the one time they’d walked anywhere together.

“I don’t know if they can trust me,” Bucky grimly reminded him.

Okay. Okay, he could work with that. It shed light on why Bucky always turned down his offers to go jogging, but there were other options. “Let me show you something?”

Surely, no one could blame him for the warmth that blossomed in his chest when Bucky responded with a terse, wordless nod. It wasn’t much. It was barely a blip in comparison to what they’d lost, but it was progress.

 

 

The something Steve wanted to show him turned out to be an empty boxing training gym. It felt oddly familiar, in spirit if not in actuality.

“There’s no one here.” He said it evenly enough, but Bucky was thoroughly relieved at that revelation.

“Yeah.” Steve was smiling at him again. Bucky enjoyed and hated that in equal measure. Hated it mostly _because_ he enjoyed it. “Turns out there are perks to being Captain America.”

“Guess so.” Bucky was sliding on a pair of gloves, mystified by how naturally it came. If he didn’t think about it, things here just happened, like muscle memory filling in for what had been so brutally ripped away.

He looked up to the rhythmic sound of gloved hands hitting a punching bag. Steve was very definitely holding back, judging from what Bucky had read. His form was good though, feet planted when he hit the bag, and moving when he wasn’t. Bucky tried to shake the feeling that he’d done all this before, but he couldn’t quite.

 _“Stop pushing the bag and just hit it.” Bucky coaxed, peering around the side and downward to meet his friend’s eyes. How Steve managed to be so slight and still look so defiant was beyond him._  
  
“I’m not.” Steve was already sounding a little wheezy, breath heavy and short. Maybe this had been a bad idea.  
  
“You are, pal. It’s not a swing. It’s a target,” Bucky encouraged. He didn’t hold out much hope that this would actually get Steve into the army, or even that it would protect him in the fights he was always getting in. It was what he could do though, so Bucky was damned well going to do it. 

 

The sharp snaps of gloves against bag were nothing like the missteps he remembered. _Steve_ was nothing like what he remembered. “You’ve come a long way.”

“You remember?” The pleased excitement in Steve’s voice only hammered home Bucky’s mistake. He couldn’t give Steve hope. It gave him hope too, and that would only end badly for everyone.

“Only a little. Nothing to write home about,” he was quick to correct. His words did nothing to quell the swell of pride in his own chest.

“But it’s something.” Much as it was currently thwarting Bucky’s attempts to manage expectations, he had to admire Steve’s positivity, just a little.

“Yeah.” Bucky’s face revolted against his own intentions, smiling ever so slightly. “Suppose it is.”

X

He had to hand it to Steve. The gym was a better solution than the roof top. It was better equipped, and for the first time since he’d come to Brooklyn, Bucky thought maybe he was worn out enough to properly sleep. He didn’t feel better, exactly, but as Steve had said, it was something.

They muddled through the day, one way or another. Bucky made a conscious effort not to flee again, instead making use of Steve’s laptop. He’d missed an awful lot, and if he was going to live in the modern world, Bucky reckoned he had a lot of catching up to do on things beyond his own trauma. Steve seemed content to let him, staring a little less, and giving space that Bucky appreciated and hated in equal measure.

Steve put food in front of him at some point. A week in, and something in the way they’d conditioned him to behave was still more powerful than his body’s ability to tell him that he was hungry. _You have no will but Hydra’s_ something in him whispered the first time his stomach hungrily gurgled, but that wasn’t right, because he’d been with the Russians. Worry gnawed at him, leaving his food tasteless and ashen, or maybe that was a product of their treatment too. He could never entirely tell.

By the time it got late enough that he caught Steve yawning, Bucky welcomed the idea of sleep. The pullout bed in the couch was surprisingly comfortable, not that he was likely to complain. He remembered bits and pieces of far worse places. The comforter Steve had pulled out to the living room was soft and sheltering, and Bucky wrapped himself up in it, finally allowing himself some measure of respite.

Sleep came a little more easily that night. Staying that way was more of a trial.

_It felt like he’d been here a thousand times. Maybe he had. They hadn’t bothered to clean up the remnants of the last few times. His cell still reeked of old blood and death._

_They’d gotten smarter about this. No matter how starved and exhausted they kept him, he could overpower one soldier, and generally, the punishment he was liable to incur for the trouble wasn’t enough to stop him from doing so. There were three this time though, two he could see, and one with a gun pressed to small of his back. Automatically, he registered that if it went off, it would tear through his spine, likely leaving him paralyzed._

_“Pull the trigger.”_

_It wasn’t a woman this time, but a man who looked just about as miserable as the soldier felt. He met the soldier’s gaze, exhausted but defiant. Mud streaked his gaunt cheeks, and blood had dried around his nostrils from a hit that looked to have bent his nose somewhat. It was the eyes that bored through him though, blue and familiar, and set in entirely the wrong face._

_The soldier wavered, briefly seeking something from his past, but it slipped away like water through a sieve. Whatever name he might have once called himself had been drowned and beaten away. His metal fingers flexed against the trigger of his pistol, but he didn’t squeeze._

_Off to his left, one of his handlers was speaking. “It wasn’t a request, soldier. You do not make decisions. You are a tool.”_

_The soldier said nothing, but he did not pull the trigger. Behind him, he heard the telltale snick of the hammer pulling back on the weapon behind him._

_“Perhaps your other handlers have been coddling you.” The voice at his back was ice down every vertebra of his spine. The soldier might have opened his mouth to clarify, but he never got the chance. The barrel of the pistol at his back was pressed more sharply against his back, cold through the thin fabric of his shirt. “If you think you have some agency in this, you misunderstand the nature of your existence.”_

_“32..5…5,” the soldier whispered, but pain short circuited what little thought he’d grasped for. A bullet tore through skin and muscle, right out the other side, off to the right of his spine. Where there had been numbers, now there was only an agonized wail, barely stifled as the soldier clenched his jaw. He squeezed his eyes shut, heart clenching as the hot muzzle of a freshly fired pistol burned into the base of his skull._

_“You don’t survive he next one.”_

_The soldier wanted to fight back. He wasn’t this. Surely, he wasn’t this. He remembered enough to believe that retaliation wouldn’t get him out of here alive this time though, and something in him crumbled there with his own blood dripping on the tiles, and a stranger kneeling at his feet. Those familiar, blue eyes were still cutting through him as he felt the pressure of a hammer pulling back under his thumb. No pleas fell from the prisoner’s lips, nothing coming out to counter the urgency of a gun pressed to the soldier’s skull._

_There were no bribes this time, no promises of food or water or anything to make his existence less miserable. There was only the threat of his own demise, and while it wasn’t new, it felt terrifyingly closer, an inky dread that crawled into the empty spaces in his head. Unsteady with blood loss and whatever they’d done to slow down his reflexes, the soldier pulled the trigger._

_They left the body that night, an insistent reminder of the line he’d crossed. In the low light, the soldier swore those eyes were still staring at him. They were lifeless, but accusatory all the same, witness to the destruction of what humanity he’d had left._

Bucky woke up with a sob, curled in on himself in the blankets. He’d feared the worst of himself, but there’d been hope until memory damned him. That wasn’t war. It wasn’t self defense. It was murder, no matter how he cut it.

Lost in his own grief, Bucky didn’t hear the door down the hall open, and he barely registered the soft rhythm of socked feet making their way closer. There was a very soft thump of a body settling on the floor beside his Bucky’s makeshift bed, but he was too distraught to care. He jumped when he felt a hand on his back though, all too close to the place where he remembered a bullet tearing through.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice was soft, and it sent a miserable shudder down Bucky’s spine. Comfort wasn’t what he deserved, and he didn’t know how to accept it anyway. He shied away, both relieved and sorry when Steve didn’t follow.

“Leave it alone,” Bucky grated through his teeth, the words uneven and miserable.

“You were always there. Let me return the favor.” Steve struck a strange balance between warmth and insistence, and if not for the subject matter, maybe Bucky could have given in.

“You can’t help me. You can’t unmake what… I am.” Bucky rubbed at his face with the heel of his hand, and there was that touch again, solid and soothing between his shoulder blades.

“You don’t need to be unmade, Buck. What you are is my friend who survived something terrible and came home.” Steve’s words were almost Novocain. How badly Bucky wanted to believe that. The memory that proved it wrong was so close though, an angry gash through his mind that spilled all over everything else.

“I’m not who you think I am, Steve,” he admitted quietly, clenching his jaw and forcing out the rest. Steve had been kind to him despite everything, and he was sure telling the truth was going to put a stop to what little solace he’d found since waking up. It was the truth, though. Steve deserved the truth. “I killed for them.”

Silence burned between them, and Bucky waited for the inevitable. Maybe Steve would let him stay the night, but that would be the end of it. He was on his own now, and it served him right, especially now that Bucky realized why those eyes looked so familiar. He might never be able to look Steve in the face again.

“I know.”

“What? I…” Bucky started, still not daring to turn around. Maybe Steve had only been waiting for him to remember what a monster he was.

“I read about what they did to you,” Steve cut in before the cruelty of Bucky’s psyche could flesh out anything else. “You are not the sum of what they put you through.”

Bucky’s breath came hitched and mournful. How could Steve know the truth and still not understand? There was no redemption for what he’d done? Bucky was too weary to put up much of a fight. Not when Steve’s hand on his back became an arm curled protectively around him. Not when he felt Steve’s face press against his back. Bucky just curled in tighter, face buried in his hands. “I still pulled the trigger.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying the story so far! I enjoy making new friends and taking story requests, so feel free to prod at me over on my [Tumblr](http://www.drowningbydegrees.tumblr.com)


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